Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, A dupe and a deceiver! a decay, A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.
But, slavery is good for some people! ! ! As a good thing, slavery is strikingly peculiar, in this, that it is the only good thing which no man ever seeks the good of, for himself.
If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.
In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith.
The Spirit of Place [does not] exert its full influence upon a newcomer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America.... The moment the last nuclei of Red [Indian] life break up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon of the continent.
Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.
The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is this stuff [ indicating her body ], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.
When a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.
The peoples furthest from civilization are the ones where equality between man and woman are furthest apart-and we consider this one of the signs of savagery.
Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!
We arrange our lives-even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just as much as the most limited-with reference to what society conventionally rules and makes right.